A Single Glass of Water
by Writer is Ninja
Summary: Forget all you knew about dreaming; this is *her* dream now. AU. Both Het and Slash.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Inception does not belong to me. Copyright infringement is not intended.

A/N:

**Warning:** I have mild dyslexia and dyscalculia. There may be small grammatical errors and large mathematical ones.

Summary: Forget all you knew about dreaming; this is *her* dream now. AU. Both Het and Slash.

_A Single Glass of Water_

* * *

"She was a student of mine, an amazing architect, and her mother will pay anything."

"I can't build, Miles," Dom reminded.

"So let _her_ do the building."

* * *

"I think she's looping," Eames said, pulling out the IV. At their looks, he added, "Not _insane_, you ninnies! Looping as in being in an endless loop."

"I'm listening," Dom said interestedly.

"Well, hear me out mates; Miles said that she graduated, right?"

"_Right_…" Arthur said with a 'get it over with' expression.

"Well she's still a student in there, isn't she?"

"So she's on an endless loop of the past _why_?" Arthur asked skeptically.

"Because of some regret. So we get her past the regret and she wakes up."

"Well, what's her regret, then?"

"That's _your_ job, Point Man," Eames shrugged.

Arthur snorted and went to open his mouth, when Dom interrupted –

"What's bothering me is how the mother's paying for this. We can do it within the year allotted, that's a given, but where is a middleclass woman _getting_ this money?"

"No mafia contacts," Arthur said immediately.

"No, gentlemen," the man said with a certain firmness, stepping into the room. The man beside him looked less… stern. "_I_ am funding you."

"Saito," Dom nodded tensely.

"Worry not, Mister Cobb. While you failed, you were just doing your job. You impressed me – though I'd suggest a better Architect. You are the second best Extractor I have ever met," Saito explained.

"Who's the first?" Arthur asked.

"The woman in that bed," he answered simply.

"…so we're waking the competition?" Eames said with some humor.

The other man gave a slight smile.

"No, you're waking our _friend_. She only did those jobs on the side, generally as favors to us. Mostly she's into legal architecture."

"Extremely _lucrative_ favors, I imagine?" Eames half joked.

"We paid off her student loans. After that she declined more payments, but I may have… _slightly_ disagreed," Saito's lips twitched.

"Slightly as in her bank account expanded exponentially," the other man said drily.

"I'm sorry, but I didn't catch your name," Dom said.

The man looked both surprised and pleased.

"Bloody Hell, Dom, what rock have _you _been living under? That's Robert Fischer!"

"That rock called work," his reply came flatly.

Fischer chuckled.

"While it's nice to know that not _everyone_ knows me by face, let's get back on topic."

"Mister Cobb, if you do this within the year I will get you back into America," Saito said simply. "One call is all it would take."

They shared looks, all nodding.

"We can do this."

"Now, you say you're friends?" Arthur asked immediately. "We need more personal details. Access to her home maybe; things like that."

"What do you want to know?" Robert asked slowly. Saito stroked his hand softly, Eames noted but didn't comment on. Those two were obviously _more_ than friends.

"Any traumatic experiences? I've done my research, but something's buried beyond my capabilities."

"When she was fourteen, she had two friends; Araya Callahan and Thomas Pryce. Tom was in love with Araya, and when she gently turned him down, he slit his throat right in front of them."

"So her regret is not saving her friend?" Arthur asked.

"She'd be looped in high school for that," Dom shook his head.

"I'd say her biggest regret is not seeing the issues and helping," Robert sighed.

There was a pause.

"So we let her play your therapist, Cobb," Eames finally suggested. "God knows you've got some bloody issues."

"And how do we _conceivably_ get me that close to her?" Dom sighed, not denying it. He didn't mention the issue of Mal with their other company.

"She's an Architect," Arthur said. "Let's give her a job."


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: Inception does not belong to me. Copyright infringement is not intended.

A/N:

**Warning:** I have mild dyslexia and dyscalculia. There may be small grammatical errors and large mathematical ones.

Summary: Forget all you knew about dreaming; this is *her* dream now. AU. Both Het and Slash.

_A Single Glass of Water

* * *

_______

"Fuck!" Arthur screamed.

He dropped and rolled, even doused himself in water, but the flames wouldn't go out. They burned a bright blue that had his skin charring in seconds. He put a bullet into his head with relief. He was the last one out, shivering and gasping as he came up. Dom held him tightly. Arthur did _not_ want to go through security like that again.

Neither did Eames.

Out of all of them, only Dom was calm. Apparently he'd been burned to death before, or some variation of it. Probably Mal.

"I'm going in again."

So he went in alone. Again. And again. And again.

"Do you _like_ pain?" a child asked, checking the seamless manacles.

She was a pretty little thing. Brown hair, blue eyes.

"We want to help, help wake her up."

"She thinks she's awake," the projection said in way of acknowledgement. "How do you wake an Extractor, an Architect, who thinks they're awake?"

"You give them a story," Dom smiled.

The projection paused.

"She's on the second level. I'll let you _try_."

"And my friends?"

"Fine," the little girl huffed. "But you best have made progress in two weeks her time."

"We will," Dom said confidently.

* * *

Eames and Arthur winced the second they entered the dream.

"I'm not going to burn you," the little girl rolled her eyes. "The PASIV is that way," she pointed, "one of the upstairs bedrooms, forth house on the right."

"This place is a bloody ghost town," Eames whispered.

"I'm the only projection here," the child nodded. "Someone has to ward off intruders and hold the level while she sleeps. I'd make whatever you're going to need in the second level, by the way. Down there she thinks it's reality; the projections are disassociated and act like real people. Changing something _here_ can make me get… nasty."

"Burning wasn't nasty?" Arthur winced.

"Not by a long shot," Dom agreed, remembering a few instances.

"Remember our deal; progress report in two weeks," the projection demanded.

They looked at her in shock.

"What? I'm disassociated too, to an extent; I need to know these things."

"I think it was your pushiness that did it, luv," Eames explained.

"Oh. Get used to it."

She left them to it, and with a shrug Eames began walking towards the house they needed, the others following. Suddenly, the projection veered into an alley.

"Hi! You're not hers."

"No, I'm not," the dark-haired woman agreed with a smirk.

"Keep me company while they're on the second level? I miss having company."

"So do I, sweetie," she sighed sadly. "Of course I will."


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: Inception does not belong to me. Copyright infringement is not intended.

A/N:

**Warning:** I have mild dyslexia and dyscalculia. There may be small grammatical errors and large mathematical ones.

Summary:

_A Single Glass of Water

* * *

_________

"I'm Mal," the woman said gently. "Mallorie Cobb. Dom is my husband."

"Dom?" the little girl asked.

"The blonde one."

"Oh. Names. I'd forgotten that people have names. Will you name me?"

"… Roxanne," Mal said after a moment. "You look like a Roxanne."

"Are you a part of the plan?"

"Probably. I'm a manifestation of Dom's grief and anger at himself. My function is to invade his life, so he probably expects me to make things go wrong. Which I _have_ to; it's my _purpose_. I need to invade his life so that he'll _face me_."

"Ignoring you makes you stronger," Roxanne nodded, "more self-aware. You've taken on the mind of Dom's wife as he knows it."

"What is _your_ function?" Mal asked.

"I'm a wish-fulfillment. She wants to have children; I'm ignored, put away, because she _can't_. I guess my purpose is to hurt. It's why I hold the level; so she doesn't have to see me. Why would I want to hurt myself?"

"Some people do, dear," Mal said in amusement. "Dom must be a closet masochist to keep me around like _this_. He can't access the _good_ memories of her – too much grief – so he doesn't think about how lovely she was. _I'm_ the edge of a knife. I'm his _sorrow_."

Roxanne nodded quietly.

"Braid my hair?"

"Sure," Mal smiled. "Let me tell you about my children…"

She conjured a brush and a hair elastic and they talked quietly for a good half an hour or so. She had all the memories that Dom had of his children, so she sat and taught the girl how to be a child.

"I'll have to go soon. Dom is with Ariadne in a new dream level. She's changing it quickly."

"How did you know her name?" Roxanne blinked.

"I forgot how disassociated you are," Mal shook her head. "I'm just as connected to him as his wife was, sweetie. I know _everything_ he knows."

"Wow," the child said in awe. "I've _never_ felt that."

"You will, in time," Mal smiled.

Time to play her part, Mal's face went grim.

* * *

"I travelled her dream world while you were off 'looking' for me, Cobb. She's created a whole _world _here. I mean as in only Sudan is black space," Eames whispered. "She's got a New York, a Los Angeles, a fair imitation of Mombasa… she's even got suburbs. This girl has _amazing_ attention to detail. It would be like me remembering all the lines to The Merchant of Venice."

Dom's eyes widened. Eames hadn't been an actor in _years_.

"Yeah, we're gonna bloody need help on this. I hate to call in tourists, but…"

"Saito and Fischer," Dom sighed, rubbing his eyes.

* * *

"It's only when we wake up that we realize something was strange," Dom smiled.

He's said this before, but never so gently.

He is, after all, training her _against_ Extractors while they work this job. She had never thought of how intimate sharing a dream might be, but you're inside a _mind_, and currently he's inside hers. Her mind is already a giant maze, he notes at first, easy to get lost in and definitely hard to Extract from, but he refines it. At first it was uncomfortable, this strange intimacy, but her projections, while tense, left him alone. That was a sign of tentative trust. Now the trust isn't so tentative.

She doesn't tell him that for all her mind is filled with paradoxes everything goes to nowhere. She doesn't tell him that her memories are in the walls, the rugs, in the red strings of thread that lie under the ground that allow her to always know her way back exactly – from any portion of her mind-city. Ariadne doesn't tell him that it's not how her bishop falls that is the secret; it's that it's hollow with a note inside. If it's solid, it will _feel_ wrong. She tips it over as a deception, sort of like Eames and his poker chip. Ariadne _knows_ that's not his totem, whatever his actions might imply. She doesn't know what it is but she knows what it's _not_. He's too confident in who he is once the Forging is done to ever need an anchor to reality so often.

She doesn't tell Dom that the library in her mind is filled with books that only have on pages what you expect to see; he thinks they're all textbooks. He notices on his own that her mind is a melting-pot of cultures, but Ariadne doesn't mention her gypsy homeschooled childhood (except for that one year where she went to a real high school), sometimes with sleeping in vans on air mattresses. Arthur may have known where and when she travelled though his research, but he'll never understand the _people_ aspect of it.

Arthur's not the type that could understand back-alleys of starving children and addicts and homeless people, let alone that she's walked the alleys with murderers in no fear for her life (even as a child). Illegality doesn't scare her. Eames notices her knives where the others would only notice guns, and that it's only the first time she was killed to wake up that scared her. Eames actually gets that part, the beauty in disaster.

Dom doesn't get how beautiful he is to her.

"But one day we have to wake up," as the sedative runs out.

He hasn't yet. That's why she has to save this man.

Oh, the irony.


End file.
